Breaking the chains, winning the games, and saving Western Civilization.

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

The urge to apologize

A few days ago, Scott Adams was talking about how Trump could fix a nonexistent problem with women by apologizing, which would somehow cleverly bait Hillary Clinton into having to force Bill Clinton to apologize, which she wouldn't, which would just prove that she was a hypocrite.

Or something like that, anyhow. To be honest, I quit paying attention not long after reading "Trump" and "apologize". It reminded me of how, after the Megyn Kelly affair, Michael Medved was going on and on about how it would be a brilliant move for Trump to "break protocol" and present Kelly with flowers on stage.

Trump, of course, did nothing of the sort, and instead blew off the debate entirely. He then proceeded to blow the doors off the rest of the Republican competition.

Now, Medved is an idiot, but Adams isn't, so what accounts for the similarity in their goto fixit strategies? I suspect the answer is similar socio-sexual rank; the Gamma always feels the urge to seek emotional relief from women through apologizing to them.

I asked Delta Man, who is a recovering ex-Gamma, about this, and he said that Gammas constantly want to reconcile with everyone to a fault, and that it's a sort of martyrdom when the pressure gets too great. The risk of failure and loss starts to look attractive in comparison with bearing the emotional pressure.

I don't know about that. But what I do know is that apologizing for something for you you feel no genuine contrition, apologizing for strategic reasons, or in order to relieve pressure on you, is not something that any man should do.

If it's not broken, don't try to fix it. You may break something else.

33 comments:

Adams is guilty of over thinking, and guilty of believing that the codes men subscribe to can be transferred. Hillary would take any Trump apology as a white flag and would lord it over him until her death. Never would she consider that the principles behind the apology should apply to her or Bill. Hypocrisy is a quality women do not understand or recognize within themselves. It's like asking a man to give birth to a child.

There's a great line in the movie Kingdom of Heaven… "Speak the truth always, even if it leads to your death." If every man took that to heart, Hillary would never have had a political career let alone be in a position where it's suggested that others should apologize to her.

Given Trump’s reputation for not apologizing, he can create an unusual amount of attention if he ever breaks pattern. A sincere Trump apology – about anything – would control the news cycle for a week.

Meh. Trump has proven time and again that he can control the news cycle whenever he wants WITHOUT apologizing. Indeed, usually by doing the opposite - i.e., by saying something outrageous that provokes a storm of demands that he apologize.

I read this article by Scott a few days ago and had the exact same reaction. I've agreed with most of what he has written to date, but this just seemed so ignorant and unlike Scott. But alas, Trump will, rightly, not apologize and so I just "moved along, nothing to see here".

There was more to that Scott Adams post. I don't pretend to know what is the best choice in this case, but for the readers, here's a summary of Adams' post ...

+ by apologizing, Trump breaks his habit and gets attention+ Trump frames the apology as only to women (even though he insults men and women) + this sets up an opportunity to challenge Hillary to do the same -- i.e., apologize to the women she attacked to protect Bill + this creates a contrast. Trump only offends with words, but Hillary offends with actions. + the media would pursue this, because they love apologies.

He then goes on to say that he's not advocating that Trump apologize. He's just viewing the strategy implications.

Years back, Adams wrote a post about decision-making under different emotional states, and how stress reduces our ability to resist others' viewpoints. As an example, he suggested it would be better to ask a girl out when she was stressed from studying for exams. This struck me as so absurd and fundamentally misunderstanding of female thinking that I stopped reading him for years, up until he started publishing his excellent series on Trump.

Adams can be on point when describing psychologies more-or-less like his, but completely whiffs it when he has to imagine people who think differently.

Has anyone ever tried an "apology (reverse) opener". It surprises me the number of cute girls who will fall over themselves to apologize to me just for accidentally bumping into me in a crowded space or something equally benign...at which point they have not only initiated a conversation but have put themselves in a position of needing my approval.

The public apology never works to your benefit. People demand it because they want to bring you down--not because anything you say (the apology) will mollify the prior verbal infelicity. And the apology will never be sufficient--there will be demands for more, on various, sundry, and related issues. E.g. beta men will demand apologies for demeaning 'their' women.

Adams analysis/observations are usually good because he looks past the surface of the moment. In this instance, he assumes there is a mirror (reciprocal) relationship between Trump and Hillary--a huge misnomer.

Actually Vox Day, your own inability to apologize and admit you are wrong is exceedingly gamma like. As is your fear of anyone who disagrees with you. And no doubt it is your precise kind of stupidity that is going to eventually deliver us Mama Hillary.

"Does an apology only serve to re-order who is the lord and who is the servant?"

Public, corporate confession is an integral part of Reformed worship. It performs the (currently much needed) function of facilitating an environment of self-awareness, mutual trust, and humility before God and neighbor.

As a teacher, I'll often ask for a "wrong answer" if I'm in a classroom environment where the students are afraid to participate (lest they give a wrong answer and look stupid). The smart kid will eventually give a right answer, then I'll pretend to to get on him for not following my instructions. That's breaks the ice, and then the students are less afraid to offer suggestions, allowing real learning to happen.

A similar thing happens when corporate confession is done well.

The current distaste for apologies is a reaction to it being done poorly (foremost, without God).

I have no idea if it's relevant, but Adams did graduate from U.C. Berkeley aka Beijing West. So it's possible he has all kinds of leftist/Marxist feeling and ideas about the value of public self-criticism during "struggle sessions" and so forth.

Lol..yeah, because the "I'll apologize first for upsetting you, now don't you owe an even bigger apology for your worse behavior?" gambit works so well on women and SJWs. Trump wasn't born yesterday, in fact he's only a month away from hitting the Biblical "threescore and ten" (Psalm 90:10)

The lesson is that if you give unscrupulous people an inch they'll take a mile. The media is out to destroy Trump. Trump knows that if he had apologized to Kelly, that would have given the media carte blanche to make all sorts of false insinuations about Trump. Apologize to people who deserve an apology, don't apology to people who are trying to put you on the defensive.